Mars Life? 20 Years Later, Debate Over Meteorite Continues

Twenty years ago, NASA scientists and their colleagues announced they had spotted possible signs of Mars life in a meteorite. In 1996, researchers led by David McKay, Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston suggested that they might have found microbial fossils in a meteorite from Mars known as Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001). The meteorite was first discovered in 1984 by geologists riding snowmobiles through the Allan Hills region of Antarctica.